Maternal grandfather of the 46th U.S. President - Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Obituary

A. J. Finnegan Dies; Librarian on Papers

Ambrose J. Finnegan, 2448 North Washington Ara., retired librarian of The Tribune and The Scrantonian, died yeaterday afternoon in St. Mary's Hospital after a long illness.

Mr. Finnegan, who was widely known in the newspaper business, retired about eight years ago due to ill health. He joined the advertising department of The Scrantonlan almost 40 years ago. He became librarian of the newspaper three years before his retirement.

A native of Olyphant, a son of the late James and Catherine Roche Finnegan, Mr. Finnegan left this area following high school to enroll at Santa Clara College, Calif. A star athlete, he gained nationwide recognition for his feats while quarterback of the Santa Clara football team.

Following his graduation from college, he was associated in the real estate business in San Francisco with the late Major Edward Bowes, later prominent in the radio field as creator and conductor of The Amateur Hour. He was in that city when it was rocked by the great earthquake of 1908.

In his vivid recollection of the quake, Mr. Finnegan frequently told friends of the devastation and terror which ensued. He was "asleep" he pointed out, on that fateful the April 18 morning when West Coast city felt the effects of the catastrophe.

Awakening, he dressed and fled amid collapsing buildings to the suburbs. "Everyone thought it was the end of the world he recalled.

Three months after the earthquake Finnegan returned to this city and joined the Engineering Corps for the Hudson Coal Co.

Later he was employed by the Scranton Gas 8c Water Co. in a similiar capacity. Some time later he joined the local advertising staff of the Sunday Elmira, N. Y., Telegram. He became associated with The Scrantonlan in 1918.

A son, Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., was killed in aerial combat in the South Pacific in World War II. Another son, Gerard, died In Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1950, where he Represented The Addressograph-Multigraph Co. Surviving are a daughter, Mrs. Joseph Biden, Wilmington, Del.;, two sons, Edward Blewitt Finnegan, at home, and John Finnegan, an instructor at the University of Scranton, and formerly associated with the Veterans Administration in its Wilkes-Barre office; and 12 grandchildren.

...Funeral services will be held from the Cusick Funeral Home, 217 Jefferson Ave., Wednesday with mass in St. Paul's Church at 10:15 a. m. Interment, St Catherine's Cemetery, Moscow.

The Tribune, Scranton, Pennsylvania • Tue, May 28, 1957 Page 3

maternal grandfather Ambrose Finnegan died in Scranton